China’s Space Debris
An event happened recently that I should have blogged about, but I seem to have taken a month off, so you get it a little bit late.
Space debris is a real problem. There are about 10,000 objects in earth orbit that the US Space Command has catalogued and tracked. These objects are over 10 cm in size and given that they are staying in orbit, are mostly moving very quickly. In 1998 there were 8,000 catalogued objects. Upper stages of rockets sometimes explode, as the upper stage of a Pegasus did in 1996 creating 700 catalogue-able objects, and hundreds of thousands of others. Orbital debris is moving so fast, relative to other orbital objects, that if two meet catastrophic results may be obtained. The international space station is continuously pelted with debris. So is hubble.
The largest problem however is the fact that as more debris is created, the chain reaction of one piece running into another creates ever more debris. There may come a critical point where we effectively deny ourselves the use of space. There has already been one case of mission failure due to space debris.
Recently the US and China have been working on an agreement to try to minimize the amount of space debris. So I have to ask myself, what on earth were they thinking when the purposely created the worst orbital space debris event ever? Didn’t want to be left behind the US?
When the Pegasus upper stage exploded, the impact probability for the Hubble Space Telescope doubled immediately. Fortunately the stage was in a relatively low orbit so much of the danger passed as objects fell back to earth. However this most recent ASAT weapon test by China was in a low-mid range orbit so the middle of the debris cloud is at about 530 miles giving the debris a much longer lifetime. Fortunately the danger to the ISS was short lived to to the orbital dynamics involved.
It will be interesting to see what China has to say for itself on April 23, when they are hosting the international conference on space debris. One things for sure, all that nice nice we were making about joint space ventures, to the moon and all that, well that ain’t happening anymore.
I just hope we get space debris under control and soon, otherwise we may wall ourselves into our planet for a hundred years.
I have a different perspective on this situation. I think the sooner we recognize that we are permanently walled up on this planet, the better.
Some people seem to treat space exploration as some sort of fun hobby, or pseudo-religious research. True, the scientific budget for exploring space is pretty small, relative to many other government programs. That fact has been used to distract from much larger problems. Even the way we talk about it is misleading - we’re not so much “exploring nature” as “building a new industrial brownfield in the sky.”
I was disturbed to learn about nuclear proliferation in space, especially that “…the history of nuclear power in space has been fraught with accidents-that some 15 percent of U.S. and Soviet missions have undergone mishaps including the fall back to Earth of the SNAP-9A nuclear satellite system in 1994 that broke up in the atmosphere dispersing 2.1 pounds of plutonium widely over the planet, an accident that has been linked to an increased level of lung cancer on Earth.” http://www.ringnebula.com/project-censored/1997/1997-story1.htm
While the budget for exploring space is relatively small, the consequence of doing so is not - that’s the whole point of space exploration supporters: more bang for the buck, so to speak. But that’s very much a two-edged sword. The cost of treating those additional lung cancer patients doesn’t appear in anyone’s space exploration budget - not to mention the extra lung cancer patients in impoverished areas worldwide, where they just die miserably without treatment. And that’s just a single event, one that we know. How much else is out there that we don’t know? Space exploration is done largely under cover of military secrecy.
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that what goes up sometimes comes down,” as the article says. Exactly who do we trust to make wise decisions about what to put in space? Right now it’s the governments of the US, Russia, and China. Based on their past behavior, I’d say their judgment sucks. North Korea just tested a missle much like an ICBM, which is to say that they are close to achieving the ability to “explore” space. It’s not just governments, either. Private enterprise is quickly gaining the ability to put things in space. Should the people who brought you the Exxon Valdez be trusted to choose payloads for the space shuttle? AT&T has been designing and placing satellites for years. Can Halliburton be far off?
Here on earth, we have grand horizons to explore, and fascinating barriers to overcome. Medical science is full of them. How can we overcome the worldwide childhood obesity epidemic? How can we reduce the human population in humane, balanced, sustainable ways? Like space “exploration,” these are questions of both science and public policy. Breakthroughs in these areas, however, would likely improve the lives of billions of people. In times past, there were attempts to predict the same for space exploration. None of those predictions have borne fruit, however.
The sooner space is filled with projectiles that overwhelm harmful public policy and prevent further stupid experiments, the better.
The problem with this comment is that it is only looking at the indirect benefit of space utilization, and not the direct benefits we rely on every day. Emergency officers can more accurately find you thanks to GPS, hurricanes can be predicted and tracked thanks to weather satellites, and communications satellites keep us in touch with distant relatives.
Should we choose to abandon all of these modern conveniences because some money is wasted on programs you don’t find appealing? If it is truly the concept of radiation falling from the sky that worries you, you should be happy that NASA and the US government agrees with you: “The SNAP-9A accident caused NASA to become a pioneer in developing solar photovoltaic energy technology. And in recent decades, all U.S. satellites have been solar-powered. So is the International Space Station.” Long range missions still use RTGs however, so feel free to write our congress-critter. (Good luck with that, the Cassini protests got them to do a redesign to make the RTGs much less likely to breakup on launch, but they didn’t change the earth fly-by.)
Interestingly, I think that our differing worries actually have the same solution. You don’t want money wasted on fruitless and/or dangerous projects, whereas I want the near earth orbital space to remain viable for our children for projects that we can’t yet imagine which will improve life on earth. Both these issues could conceivably be solved by severely constraining missions to orbital space. Missions that are not critical for earth use could be sent to the lagrange points instead, where they won’t junk up the more useful orbital space. More importantly however, the orbital missions should be much more carefully monitored for potential hazards. In your case, you might argue that the US moratorium on radioactive elements in orbit be made universal. In my case, I would want anything that goes into orbit to have fail-safe de-orbit capability, to better manage a (vast though) limited resource.
Hoping for space to become useless so that we can concentrate on earthbound problems is like hoping that we run out of oil, so that we can start concentrating on nonpolluting energy generation. We as a nation should be able to work on those public policy issues, not have them forced on us by our past stupidity.
I guess my thoughts come from your statement: “Space debris is a real problem.” What kind of scope are you working with? Do you mean space debris is a real problem like a power outage at a model train convention would be considered a “real problem” to a small group of hobbyists? I’m totally down with that description. But if you mean space debris is a real problem like worldwide small arms proliferation is a real problem, well, we need to talk. I realize as I am typing that I made some assumptions about what level of problem you meant. Maybe you were thinking within a different set of assumed boundaries than I was.
Around a month ago, I broke up (slowed, really) eight people pounding the crap out of a woman on the sidewalk on Sheridan Road. One guy was lying on top of her and holding her arms, while the rest swarmed around taking shots at her face, head, and torso. Despite my repeated calls to 911, it took the police twenty very tense minutes to get there, which is a funding and policy issue not really affected by technology. Instant GPS location didn’t help me then, and doesn’t help people in Darfur, either. I can buy a 63-inch flatscreen TV and rack up a billion points on Donkey Kong, but most people in the world don’t have access to the most basic medical and dental care. I tend to view these high-end glamor science projects as a kind of playing with toys. I’m all in favor of playing with toys, but my hackles start rising when there are these claims that society is moving forward as a result of space exploration.
Underlying all of this is my tendency to be somewhat of a Luddite. I’m deeply skeptical of the idea that our technological advances make life better for anyone other than the wealthiest sliver of the wealthiest nations. What I see is technology invariably concentrating, not distributing, power. Although older technology does get distributed, the gap constantly widens. Even the widely-lauded advent of penicillin and innoculations against childhood diseases is of questionable benefit. Have we really improved life generally if the result of these early medical inventions is massive overpopulation, war, famine, and adult disease among the beneficiaries? IMHO, these supposedly “vast” improvements are tiny little pressures on a very large balloon that just pooches out in another place to balance the equation. Europe in the Middle Ages was supposed to have been horrible, but Cambodia and Darfur look to me to be comparable tragedies for a similarly-sized population, just coupled with a sort of cultural triumphalism about technology over here in North America.
You’re right, of course, that we would all be much better off if these things could be fixed with policy changes. I hope your implied belief that such a thing is politically conceivable (before we destroy space with hazardous waste) comes to pass. My guess is that changes in policy will require a series of preventable, but spectacular and irreparable tragedies, and in support of that, I would point to the social and political effects of petroleum. Our basic strategy of waiting for catastrophe before acting on warnings seems to be totally unchanged. Thus, technologically concentrated power has advanced while our judgment of how to use it remains extremely poor. Now, that’s a real problem.
I have to say that your take on technology is pretty high handed. It seems to come from the standpoint of someone who believes that he could make it without technology. Called 911 from your cellphone? Where do you think that radio technology came from? Technologies can condense power, but they can also empower the powerless. The literacy rate went from 30% to 60% in the generation following the invention of the printing press. Cell phones let you call for help when you don’t have a group of thugs at your disposal.
Also, have any friends who are diabetic? You wouldn’t without the advantages of modern technology.
Power invariably concentrates power, not technology. The problem of power concentration has always existed, the middle ages that you mention? Want your concentration of power? The pope wielded the power of God himself for most of Europe. And use that power he did, but it didn’t take much in the way of technology.
Many technologies require large amounts of capital investment to bring to market. This investment necessarily comes from those with power. Because of this it benefits those with power the most, from the robber barons to the manhattan project’s military industrial complex. However to say that the rail system and jet travel didn’t benefit their respective populations would require a lot of convincing.
Overpopulation, war, famine, and disease have always been with us, and always will. Technology will not eliminate them, and social planning will not either. In fact social planning used to try to solve these problems may concentrate power even more. The best we can do is to try to direct both technology and social movements to be used for the general good. I would say that our judgement of how to use technology is just as bad as our judgement of how to use concentrated power. But that doesn’t mean that we would be better off without it.
I had a professor in a history of science class that I took in college who made a similar Luddite argument to the entire historical arc of science. The problem with that argument is that science allows us to understand the world we live in. Given that we are even having this conversation means that we agree that the world is worth trying to improve. When going about a task like that, we need as much information as we can get about the way the world works. The problem is that knowledge is a type of power, which can be abused. Money is another, military might is another. At least with space exploration we aren’t spending our money on forcing our ideology on a group of people that don’t really seem to want it.
Wait, so you’re saying that space debris is a “real problem” in the largest scope possible? I don’t understand you saying that my approach to technology is high handed when I’m the one pointing out that the least among us don’t benefit from it. Investing in space exploration is precisely forcing an ideology on people who don’t want it, because the social resources put into space exploration therefore aren’t spent on other things. But not only that - in one example I named, space exploration meant forcing toxic carcinogens into the lungs of people who surely didn’t want to die of cancer. Far better to have spent the money on violin lessons for children or new sewage systems for cities.
You seem not to have noticed that the cell phone call to 911 was an example of technology not fixing a problem - in those 20 minutes, the thugs didn’t kill me because they chose not to, not because my phone call made it impossible. They watched me make the call and kept beating the woman. Whether I have diabetic friends doesn’t meet the point either - my diabetic friends have serious trouble getting the medical care they need in the US, and if they had been born in rural Namibia, well, they might as well be born in Europe in 1300 AD. Research paid for from everyone’s tax money results in medical care only for the rich.
Did the advent of mass transit improve lives, or did it destroy village living and the extended family? Was there a way to invent jet planes without incidentally inventing the ICBM? What is the ultimate outcome of inventing nuclear weapons? Einstein went to his grave convinced that his inventions would someday sterilize the planet, and his fear hasn’t yet been proven wrong. The advance of technology takes place largely in a scope of decades - human history in millenia. There is no rational basis for measuring the effects of technology on humans in decades. How many times have humans refrained from using deadly military technology for centuries at a stretch? We’re lucky to have survived 62 years with only two military uses, but there’s no guarantee we’ll go another 62 without a lot more. In fact, all current political indications are that we should expect to see a lot more nukes by a lot more people in the very near future.
Even understanding for its own sake benefits the wealthy disproportionately. Relatively few have the opportunity to become experts, and very few reach a point of controlling policy. Knowing the existence of muons benefits practically no one.
I also don’t see why you accept overpopulation, war, famine, and disease as beyond human control. Homer and Chaucer probably would have agreed with you, but I think they would have found the idea of walking on the moon equally ridiculous. You say these tragedies are beyond our control; I say they just haven’t been adequately addressed. It’s an unprovable theory, but if Galileo imagined that humans might one day walk on the moon, he would have spent his life never knowing if it was truly possible. That we may not see it in our lifetimes doesn’t make it impossible - it only means we don’t yet know.
Thanks for all your responses. My response was specifically to your claim that we might be better off without technology in general. Now I’m going to generalize one more step…
Everything in life is a tradeoff. Humans are at heart tribal, we care about ourselves, our family, our neighbors, and only then others. Hopefully we strive for better than that. It is the tradeoff between value for self and other that I believe is at the heart of what we are talking about here. You are seeing the suffering of others and asking how we can spend on anything non critical when there are so much suffering remaining in the world. WIth this viewpoint we should be doing everything in our power at every moment to help those less fortunate than ourselves. Given that we are having this conversation via computers neither of us do that. So the question is where do we draw the line. You draw the line before space exploration. Myself, I would draw the line before fruitless wars. But then what would you do with those extra resources?
Improve the sewage system in Chicago which has been around for a hundred years and will start to break down in the near future? While there are so many others who don’t even have access to clean water let alone rudimentary sewage systems? How can we provide for our own needs first when there are so many others who need so much? That is actually a serious question that I don’t know the answer to, however consider the following… what if I told you that I had invented something that might be able to purify water at commercial scales with no infrastructure utilizing only human provided power thus helping people have access to water, would that be worthy of the funds? What if the product was still 3 years out? What if it wasn’t definite?
We can agree to disagree on where and how our funds would be spent, but I can’t agree that we will be able to make much progress on solving overpopulation, famine and disease without advances in science and technology. The fact that we can even think about ‘helping’ people in other countries is because advances in technology have allowed us to move away from an agricultural existence where our only concerns are how we are going to survive the next winter.
I believe in the power of technology to do good (as well as bad, just like any tool) in the world, and believe that part (though clearly not all) of the way forward is with technology and the only way to advance technology is with science. I’m willing to work with you on your dream of a better world, but I want to use all the tools I have to build it. And FWIW, I could probably be argued out of supporting much of the current space program, but it would have to be on a project per project basis, not en masse.
I think the idea of going through the space budget project-by-project is an excellent idea. I’m not truly in favor of completely eliminating the entire space program, because there are ways that it can support worthwhile things on the ground. On the theme of wider generalization, the same principle should be applied to budgets generally, not just the space program budget. There’s a lot of bad policy and economic waste in government spending generally, not just the space program.
Speaking of space debris:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/Science/story?id=2885820&page=1
This is, of course, the biggest reason to keep space clear of debris prohibiting the use of near earth orbit. If we ever get advance warning of an incoming asteroid we will want to be building something in that space to go and take care of the problem.
Of course the likelihood of this actually happening are quite small. They have an interesting risk analysis section at the bottom that I think you would like.